Twitter has a feature called Trending Topics in which it tells you what some of the most popular things being written about at this moment are (i.e. Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, Iran). The problem is that if you go to see what people are actually saying about something, they are all1) Spambots trying to link their websites by posting a bunch of trending items2) People asking "Why is [thing] a trending topic?"3) People misusing it hoping that you'll see their post (with the topic tacked on the end), love it, and start following their stream of mundane observations.

Figured this was an appropriate thing to post given the latest news. I can imagine that you've already seen this before (I think it even made the 99 things you should have already seen on the internet list), but if you haven't this is 1500 prison inmates in the Philippines doing a choreographed dance to Thriller. Skip ahead to about the 1:00 mark if you're impatient.

Here we see a guy really excited to see an easy-to-answer Office Space question as his 250k question on Millionaire. Asking a college student about Office Space is like asking Barack Obama a question about the 44th president of the United States.

In the world of blogging,1) There is nothing more satisfying than posting something and seeing it hit Digg a few days later2) There is nothing for frustrating than holding off on posting and then seeing someone else post it before you get around to it.

Here's an a capella group doing Kids by MGMT (which is probably only entertaining if you know the original song) as posted to collegehumor a few minutes ago.

If I were in this group, I would want to be the "ooh waa ooh waa ooh waa" part. The leader must be an indie kid given that they also did a Fleet Foxes song and that he's posted a bunch live Of Montreal shows.

Joel typically sends out a monthy email with miscellaneous financial links and tips, and this month his email included the following thing that I had never thought about:

"We all see ads all the time about switching our auto insurance. I've always wondered "how can they all say that the average customer who switched is saving $300? They're switching to the ones that were just in that other commercial." The simple answer is that people that don't save money, don't switch :)"

Very clever, verrrry clever.

And in other intresting tidbids of information, the consumerist posted a list of 50 different ways that people are influenced. Here are two excerpts from the full article:

On having too many decisions: "When Head & Shoulders brand killed off 11 scents of the shampoo, leaving only 15 on the market, the sales rose 10%."

And of course the classic foot-in-the-door technique: "Asking for small favors changes self-perception, introducing ways for big favors. Researchers asked a group of homeowners to place a large “Drive Carefully” sign on their front lawn. Only 17% agreed. With the second group of homeowners, 76% of people were ok with road traffic people maintaining the sign on their beautiful lawns. What was the difference between two groups? A few weeks earlier group B was asked to display a small non-intrusive window sign asking drivers to slow down. This mental foot-in-the-door technique made homeowners from the group B view themselves as socially responsible and safety-aware, hence a request for a larger favor few weeks later didn’t startle them. "

A Bolivian TV channel broadcast a report saying they had gotten a hold of photos from the final moments of Air France flight 447 breaking apart. The photos, however, are actually photos of Oceanic Flight 815 (i.e. they are photos from the ABC TV show Lost)

Every 2 years, the city inspects every single unit in every single apartment community in its borders. Our apartments were done this week and the inspector couldn't stop talking about what good shape our apartments were in, especially the apartments that were ready for people to move into. [Apparently it's not the norm to offer people clean apartments?]

With the exception of 5-6 apartments, everything passed inspections. Among those that didn't pass were -one showerhead that was against code-one was so full of stuff where there wasn't a wide enough path to walk through (need 36 inches), -and two or three that were dirty: one from uncleaned cat poop/vomit.

The most surprising one, however, was someone who was a recent move in. Yes, somehow in the space of 25 days, one person lived in a manner so foul and disgusting that the city housing commission deemed it unsanitary after less than a month of occupancy (lowlights: multiple cat food dishes on the floor, not-quite-empty food containers up and downstairs, and fish skin on the floor left for cats to eat).

It takes a special kind of sloth to get two notices that apartment inspections are coming and respond by saying "meh" and displaying your barn-scented home to city officials.

but feel free to read the original article yourself. Obama recently had a news interview in which he swatted a fly and the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is all up in arms.

"Get out of here," the president told the pesky insect. When it didn't, he waited for the fly to settle, put his hand up and then smacked it dead."Now, where were we?" Obama asked Harwood. Then he added: "That was pretty impressive, wasn't it? I got the sucker."Friedrich said that PETA was pleased with Obama's voting record in the Senate on behalf of animal rights and noted that he has been outspoken against animal abuses.Still, "swatting a fly on TV indicates he's not perfect," Friedrich said, "and we're happy to say that we wish he hadn't."

At right is the "Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher, a device that allows users to trap a house fly and then release it outside" that PETA is sending him.

Even as I post this, I'm expecting comments like "oh Mike, I can't believe you fell for this fake news story"

Apartment communities love to have signs out to get your attention. "Ask about our leasing specials!" they read. "Doggone Good Deals!" says the sign being held by the cartoon dog. Apartment communities love bad puns and wordplay, adding a big green P to "Now Leasing" to make it read "Now PLeasing"

But by far, the worst sign I have seen is the sign you see below. It's staked outside of one of the local apartments. I never got around to taking a picture, so here's the reenactment:

Can you believe that an apartment would have more than one amenity? Now if only they would tell you which ones.

Raleigh police arrested a North Carolina State University student last week who was accused of creating a "monster" out of construction barrels and placing it on the side of the road.Authorities charged Joseph Carnevale with larceny for taking materials from a construction site at a roundabout project to create the monster.

As Karen pointed out, people in the Star Trek movie spent a lot of their time almost falling off of ledges, hanging from ledges, or watching their gun be kicked off a ledge.

It's a comfort to know that if I were transported to some sort of war in the future that I would still get by even with my insufficient technology since it all comes down to a fist fight in the end (though there was also a sword fight in Star Trek).

And it's not like I need a gun since the minion training school never seems to include marksmanship.

It seems that the one thing that would be most beneficial to be would not be a blaster rifle or lightsaber, but rather crampons so that when I undoubtedly find myself hanging on the edge of some great chasm, I can can get some traction and pull myself up.

Speaking of WiiFitPlus (officially one word?), everyone knows that the awesome thing about it is that you can finally string together a bunch of exercises to make your own workout routine and that there are many more exercises and games. The thing that surprised me the most is that WiiFitPlus allows you to track the fitness (well, weight) of your dog as well. Here, I queued up the trailer to the right part:

Slate ran an article about people that sign up for twitter, post once, and never come back. Some examples [each a different acct] include:

User1: "it hurts to breathe. should I go to the hospital?"

User2: "what kind of donuts are you offering?"

User3: "marching backwards toward the source of the four winds "

And through that article, I came across a website called One Post Wonder for blogs that only have one post. My personal favorite is a site someone made called Corner Bakery Watch to give her opinion on some locationless bakery. Its lone post reads:

Today I had a woman come into my office who was upset with her husband for not paying rent on time the past three months and lying about it, giving them a $50 late fee each month (for being late: we don't charge for lying).

While in my office, she called him at his work and handed me the phone, telling me to explain to him how our late process worked and how much it cost each month.

Every day, WikiHow has a featured how-to article. Today's was how to build rapport and was mostly filled with bad advice. Let's look at a few examples.

"Accents: Copy their accent slightly. You don’t want to come across as mocking them, but listen to how they pronounce words. Mimic them just enough to hint that you might've lived in their part of the country at some point in your life."

Put into practice, I feel like this will only come off as mocking them since most people probably don't have a good-enough handle on accents to do anything but mock.

"During the conversation, breathe like they breathe. This will create a hypnotic synchronization"

So while you're trying to match their accent and also listen to what they have to say, also figure out when they're breathing too.

And finally, the weirdest of all

Mimic the depth of their voice. People talk in one of three ways: through their nose, throat, or chest. Figuring it out won’t be too difficult. Compare them to the descriptions below and shift the depth of your voice a little bit closer to theirs.

- Throat: A very throaty person will sound similar to Kermit the Frog - Nose: An person who talks through their nose will sound a bit like they’re congested. - Chest: People who talk to their chest usually sound very deep and loud.

There you have it, folks. Next time you head down to a new state, bring out a toned down version of your Kermit-speaking-in-a-deliberatly-breathing-Southern-Dialect voice and you'll do great!

"Not a plant to be seen, the desert ground is too dry. But the air contains water, and research scientists have found a way of obtaining drinking water from air humidity. The system is based completely on renewable energy and is therefore autonomous."

Sound familar? May I remind you that before Luke Skywaker was a Jedi that he was a moisture farmer on the desert planet of Tatooine with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru?

Remember how, as a joke/experiment, I did a post about all the weird search terms people found me with and named it after a soon to be released popular video game? As it turns out, it's way too easy to hijack the top of google search results. 15,000 visitors (and counting) and miscellaneous childish insults later [see: right], it's pretty easy to see why people are calling for google to rework its search algorithms.

Google gives precedence to sites that1) Have the search terms in the website title ("serial")2) Have the search terms in the address (sims-3-cd-key-generator.html)3) Are recentWhich is fine when people follow the rules, but not so fine when people don't.

Some malware software writers have taken to taking over popular words by making a page that looks legit (and even has relevant text) but then instantly redirects you to another site without ever taking you to the first site. They've been known to go after top search terms on Google Trends to capitalize on up to the minute popular search terms.

Knowyourmeme.com [portions NSFW] is a database of anything that the web has beaten to death (all your base, longcat, it's a trap, etc), but amid them are things that I've never seen before (like the anteater you saw earlier) and this rich raven.

A measure of how rapidly the ritual is spreading is that some students complain of peer pressure to hug to fit in. And schools from Hillsdale, N.J., to Bend, Ore., wary in a litigious era about sexual harassment or improper touching — or citing hallway clogging and late arrivals to class — have banned hugging or imposed a three-second rule.

This time they took two random people that got married at the city clerks office, ambushed them, and threw them a surprise wedding reception in the middle of New York. Photos and video are on their mission page.